How Mainstream Media Destroys Community

Mainstream media’s focus on profit drives their actions.  The profit motives encourage media consolidation, increased focus on individual consumerism, mindless entertainment, and sensationalist journalism.  Each of these has its own adverse effects on community.

Media consolidation is the slow and steady trend toward monopolization of media.  As the major media companies consolidate, fewer voices are heard.  The major media companies all have one major characteristic in common – they exist to make a profit for their shareholders.  That means that policies that support big business support the major media companies.  Since the major media companies have a vested interest in issues related to big business, they are able to manipulate the type of media exposure that these issues receive.  Even if an issue is not in the best interests of the majority of the public, they are likely to receive an overwhelming number of media messages in support of the issue because the major media will air those views while suppressing competing views.  By limiting the available dialogue on issues of importance to the general public, the major media companies cripple community.  Communities need a free flow of information in order to function.  Media consolidation limits information flow.

The commercial nature of the mainstream media requires that the major media companies seek out new sources of revenue.  One major source of revenue is advertisers.  The more ads that a company can squeeze between their programming, the more money they can make.  Shows become shorter – an average hour-long TV program is actually only 40 minutes of show and 20 minutes of commercials (just watch some TV shows on DVD if you need proof).  The advertisers also get to dictate which programs get made.  The major TV networks don’t decide what content to air based on what they think the audience will watch; they decide what to air based on what the advertisers are willing to spend advertising dollars on.  That is why there are so many duplicate shows on TV (e.g. SuperNanny vs Nanny 911).  Once a TV company sees that a show is doing well on one network, they replicate it because they know they can sell it to advertisers.  The increased presence of advertising on TV has created a situation where people believe they need to have the latest greatest gadget in order to find happiness.  They believe this because this is the message constantly being given to them by the advertisers and the media companies.  It is not uncommon for advertisers to actually negotiate specific story lines featuring their product in their contract (just think Nissan Versa in Heroes on NBC).  Often the story line shows how the new gadget serves to make a character happy.  This increased focus on consumerism serves to detach people from communities.  People think that they can only find happiness through material possessions.  Possessions require money.  People work more to earn more money to buy the latest gadget leaving less time to participate in their community.  Community diminishes.

Mindless entertainment has become the norm.  Reality TV has popped up everywhere and the concept behind it has fueled the development of sites such as YouTube.  The idea behind reality TV has been around for a long time.  It started with TV game shows, moved to shows such as America’s Funniest Home Videos, and then, with MTV’s The Real World, the new structured, planned “reality” TV shows began to hit the airwaves.  Along with the rise of reality TV, educational shows for children began to disappear.  Watching Saturday morning cartoons today involves half-hour episodes of shows like Yu-Gi-Oh or Brats.  Yu-Gi-Oh provides about 3 minutes of actual action drawn out to cover about 15 minutes of the 30 minute program.  The other 15 minutes is filled with advertisements aimed at children.  Brats provides a little more content but doesn’t really have any educational value.  A few decades ago, shows like Duck Tales and Thunder Cats managed to pack some educational content into the show (expertly disguised as entertainment) and there were shows like The Electric Company that children loved to watch that taught all sorts of things.  The dumbing down of television means that people sit and watch without engaging their mind.  The problem here is that people zone out or become so involved in watching other people’s lives that they don’t go out and live their own.  Why seek out social connections in your own neighborhood when the lives on Big Brother come into your home and are more interesting and easy than a life that one can make for themself?  By shutting off people’s minds, these forms of media discourage social involvement and limit people’s interaction in community affairs.

Sensationalist journalism is an extension of the mindless programming problem.  Television news started the problem.  Major media companies noticed that TV news wasn’t making the same kind of money that other programming was.  They began to insist that these programs produce revenue and TV news has to change to be more like the entertainment programs in order to draw the advertisers.  It began with an increased focus on blood and sex.  The “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality started to pull the focus of the news from important social and political issues to more sensational headlines that would draw the curious.  This has moved on now to a fixation on celebrity and scandal as the lifeblood of the major media news organizations.  This has also spilled into print journalism because the major media organizations have bought up most of the major print news sources and required them to turn a profit or be shut down.  Other news organizations have had to follow suit or lose readers.  It is sad that all news today is more sensational than the stories found in The Enquirer thirty years ago.  The removal of substantive journalism from mainstream media means that many people are never acquainted with the important issues facing them in today’s society.  They are uninformed and vote based on what the major media tells them to do.  Third party candidates stand no chance in Presidential politics because the major media doesn’t cover their election bids (except as footnotes, fluff pieces, or as a threat to a major candidate’s chances).  The lack of real news coverage in the mainstream media has destroyed the “public sphere” by removing any possibility of open public discourse on the issues facing the populace.  The lack of a public sphere in which to discuss and resolve issues hurts people’s community involvement by making them feel that they can’t make a difference.  Additionally, the focus on blood and violence on the part of the mainstream news media instills a sense of distrust for one’s neighbor in the populace.  This mistrust, where the neighbor is perceived as a child molester, rapist, or murderer, serves to isolate individuals from those around them preventing the creation of community.

Each of these aspects of mainstream media serves to destroy community in its own way and I’m sure I haven’t touched on all the aspects that threaten community or all the ways these aspects hurt community.  There are many threats to community posed by the mainstream media’s commercial nature that our society doesn’t see simply because they aren’t talked about in the mainstream media.  That is why community media and grassroots organization are so important.  Through the use of community media and grassroots movements, the public can be informed and educated about the significant bias of the mainstream media and, by being informed, that public can hopefully change what has happened to the “public” airwaves.

Key policy issues facing communities today

I think there are a couple of key policy issues facing communities today: net neutrality, threats to cable franchise fees, media deregulation, and campaign finance.

Net neutrality affects communities because it affects the free flow of information on the Internet.  The major telecoms want to have control over what content is transmitted over their systems.  This is something like a telephone company wanting to control what we can say in our telephone conversation.  If the telecoms succeed in gaining control over information transmitted over their networks, they can charge fees for access to content, and limit transmission speeds for data that doesn’t support their interests.  This limits the free flow of information and ideas essential to the “public sphere”.  Communities rely on freely flowing information in order to assemble and accomplish their goals.  Limiting this will severely limit the effectiveness of community organizations to have their viewpoints heard and considered.

Threats to cable franchise fees would devastate many of the community media organizations that exist today.  A large amount of the funding for public access television comes from franchise fees and, in many communities, this is the only form of community media that exists.  Cable companies argue that the Internet provides the access to media distribution that the public access channels were supposed to provide and that the public access channels and their funding are no longer necessary.  This argument neglects the fact that many of the people served by public access and community media stations do not have consistent access to the Internet (if they have access at all).

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 removed some of the regulation that kept the mainstream media representative of the public.  The Act allowed major media companies to consolidate.  Ultimately it reduced competition and removed many of the minority owned media companies from the market altogether.  The free market ultimately favors monopolization and monopolization in the media reduces that chances for public discourse and community formation.  The major media companies would love to have more of the regulations surrounding their business removed so that they can further their choke-hold on the media diet in America.  Further deregulation would be a disaster for communities because it would further reduce the opportunities for community formation, interaction, and dissemination of information.

Finally, I think that campaign finance is a major policy issue facing communities today.  The problems mentioned above stem from government policies.  Deregulation, destruction of net neutrality, and the repeal of cable franchise fees are all decisions that would be made by legislators.  Campaign finance rules provide too much influence to big business.  When it comes to media issues, the big businesses are major media companies.  These companies provide substantial funding to politicians in order to put them in office.  In return, the expect that the politician will support their position on any issues that concern them.  In a sense, the major media companies are buying the government decisions that will support their business interests.  This has serious consequences for communities.  When the people elect officials because the media tells them to (which is how all politicians win elections today) and those politicians feel indebted to the media companies, there is little chance that the public will win on issues where the public interest differs from media company interests.  If the media companies constantly win, they can suppress any community activities they feel run contrary to their profit base.  Any community activity that pulls people away from the TV, Movies, Radio, etc. for real community interaction will eventually hit media companies’ bottom line if it catches on with enough people.  Therefore, it is in the media companies’ best interests to prevent the formation of strong communities.  They may not have thought it out that far but they effectively do this by treating community media as their competition and lobbying politicians to favor mainstream media over public and community media.  Campaign finance reform could return the power to the people and prevent the major media companies from dictating policy that hurts community.  That is why I think that campaign finance is a major policy issue facing communities today.

Technologies that build community.

There are communication and information technologies that inherently build community.  I think many community media ventures serve to build community but these are not necessarily technologies. 

I really think that the Internet, in its current unregulated form, creates community. 

One of the main uses of the Internet today is connection peer-to-peer for the sharing of information.  This new “public sphere” has revived information exchange for the middle and upper classes.  The problem with the Internet is that the lower class is not well represented.  Through community media programs, there are opportunities for poor and uneducated people to join the online discourse but there are financial barriers that these programs must overcome in order to continue operating and there are educational barriers to be overcome to facilitate the use of technology by the underprivileged. 

So, while community creation is easy on the net it is not equally accessible. 

I think the most useful Internet technology for creating community is the blog.  A blog allows for easy distribution of community information, access by all members in the community, coordination of live community events, community social interaction in a time-delayed online medium allowing everyone access regardless of work/school schedule.  This type of information repository and information distribution medium allows not only for textual announcements to be posted about community events but also for video of those events and it allows each community member to interact and participate.  With the busy schedules that most people have today, the ability to join in on community interactions at any time of the day allows more people to be a part of the community.  I think blogs could easily be used to facilitate community on the local level through discussion among community members and coordination of both online and offline events that where community members can meet in real time.

Online Virtual Community?

I’ve never been very active in any type of community.  I’m not a “joiner”.  I’m much more of a loner.  That said, I think that World of Warcraft is an extremely viable community. 

I don’t actually use it myself.  I know I wouldn’t devote enough time to it for me to spend money on it. Despite that, WoW is an amazing environment.  The people who use it join together to tell the story of the “World”.  Each individual is represented by an avatar that inhabits a virtual space (the geographical location of most community definitions).  People meet and make friends.  They discuss.  They join together to accomplish goals. 

WoW is centered around a fantasy world framework but other 3D virtual communities exist.  Second Life is similar but it is set in a virtual representation of real life (sort of).   People gather and discuss.  Even congress has met in Second Life. 

The point of these virtual worlds is that they make the online community experience more real by using the 3D avatars.  Yes, anyone can look like anything but most people use people shaped avatars.  As the technology becomes more realistic, it becomes increasingly possible for facial expression and body language to play a role in these virtual interactions.  The 3D virtual worlds allow people who are physically distant to interact on a personal level as though they were living in the same neighborhood.  It brings the world within an accessible distance and the community associations that form are just as dynamic and meaningful as those made offline.

For anyone who wants to see what a virtual world could be, I recommend Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.  His description of the Metaverse is a great look at what platforms like Second Life could become.

Virtual Education vs Traditional Education

Online learning is very different from traditional classroom learning.  In the past, online learning has been criticized because it was thought to be less rigorous and because there was concern over whether the student was really doing the work. 

Well, things have changed. 

Online learning is actually more rigorous than offline learning.  In this framework everyone is required to participate in the discussions and they need to provide well thought out answers and be able to respond to questions.  They also need to be reading others’ postings and responding to them.  This is very time consuming. 

On top of that, there is a lot of reading to be done.  In a traditional classroom, I typically would go to the lecture and ignore the textbook.  I admit it.  I still got A’s and B’s.  I hardly took part in classroom discussions and I spent little time at night working on assignments.  With the online format, I am constantly checking to see if there is something new to respond to in the discussions.  I’m always reading for class and the exams, rather than being multiple choice questionnaires, are full length papers or multimedia presentations.  

A paper or presentation is much better at demonstrating mastery of material than a multiple choice exam.  So, as far as educational value is concerned, I’d say give the points to online learning.  As for making sure that the student is the one doing the work, traditional educational settings have the same problem.  In the online framework we are using, there is enough live interaction for everyone to be familiar with everyone else.  And, with the discussion questions, it is easy to recognize someone’s writing style and “voice”.  So, having someone else do the work for you is actually pretty hard in this online environment. 

Now, the online educational experience does lack something that a traditional university offers an abundance of.  Partying.  Since the beginning of my online educational experience, I haven’t been to a single party with other students.  All that social networking through a glass of beer is missing from my educational experience.  OK, seriously, though, there is a bit of socialization that is missing.  College students learn as much from socializing with their peers and joining in with clubs and other extracurricular activities as they do from their classes.  That is missing here.  The thing is, that type of interaction should be available in the community.  A college student should be able to take rigorous classes online and participate in social activities in their community. 

Still, I will miss all the fraternity parties that I . . . wait a minute. . . I never went to them when I DID go to a traditional university.  I was too busy working a full time job to pay tuition to have time for frat parties.  Anyway, I think online is the way to go (at least for me).